Birthday Girl -- Cruising V.3.0

[mccutcheon]

So instead of cursing out my writing group all day (I did that all last night) I decided to put more effort into it. A silly thing is that I always think I've done a story to the point that it is as good as it can get and I'm always wrong. I can't be a writer because I work too damn hard at it.

Okay let me have it. My on line writing group. And I didn't take out some of the parts they hated.

Birthday Girl.


On my dad's 50th birthday my family celebrated by taking a pleasure cruise to Alaska. The ship departed from Seattle. Boarding was an unpleasant experience. There were a lot of old people and seriously obese people and they complained a lot. Living in New York City I had forgotten about the state of the States. I love America like a Bush fearing patriot. I'm glad I live in the East Village.

When they served lunch people trampled to the buffet. The passengers on the ship suffered from a condition known as Buffet Aggression Disorder. B.A.D. happens when too many people try to stuff their faces too quickly. I stuck to a liquid diet.

I sat back with a beer and observed in disgust. A Chinese crewmember was trying to make peace while the fatties were jockeying with their trays to be first in line. Her eyes widened with panic, as she was stricken with an anxiety attack. She never experienced anything like this before. The pre-board training couldn't possibly prepare her for the spectacle of people suffering from B.A.D. The poor girl probably ended up in the psychiatric sickbay.


My dad was not the only one celebrating a birthday. A girl was having her sweet sixteen. The birthday girl and her friends wore tiny two-piece bathing suits. The teens looked sensual with youth, their bodies full and fit. I was glad I brought my sunglasses. Finally somebody I could stand to look at.

The birthday girl was built for her age and had brilliant dark twinkling eyes and a broken arm. She would sit in the hot tub, the skimpy Stars & Stripes bikini top stretched over her newly bloomed buoyant breasts. Her cast was wrapped in a plastic bag. She sipped Diet Coke with a straw and watched me work on my laptop. I would often lose myself and look back at her through my dark shades. If I were her age she wouldn't have the time of day for me.

My brother had broken his leg snowboarding a month ago and my sister had a recent cosmetic surgery, so they had trouble sleeping. My siblings had a pharmacy of Vicodine, Percoset, and Valium. I stole a few pills from each bottle. I wasn't in any pain, but it helps to be prepared.



I signed up to take a helicopter excursion. I looked at the brochure. It said all passengers weighing more than 250 pounds would be subject to an extra charge of ½ the ticket price. Once on top the glacier you could go for a dogsled. For the dogs' sake I hoped there wouldn't be any 250 plus poundage for them to pull.


A girl working at the local pub in Juneau told me every season people perish in violent ways. I decided to have five beers for courage. The girl wasn't helping the situation. She said planes and helicopters fly into the sides of mountains they can't see. I told her I'd be back and come say hello when I returned.

The pilot let us off and said we had an hour to go exploring but the weather wouldn't hold so the dog sledding was cancelled. The first thing I did was to find a clearing to drain my bladder of beer. After the hour of half-heartedly looking around we returned to the pick up area. The pilot hadn't come back. I searched the skies for the helicopter and all I saw was a thick white haze. It took another five hours before it was clear enough to be picked up. Our group leader started swearing. There was a lot of muttering God's name, both in prayer and in vain. Just about everyone said ‘Jesus Christ' in one-way or another.

The people who weren't swearing talked survival tactics. This scared me because it had been a long time since the last meal. I thought they would draw straws and revert to cannibalism. It was with great relief when I heard the chopper coming to the rescue. It reminded me of those Vietnam War movies where the pilot comes to rescue the hero (I was the hero) and pulls him out just in time.

Safely back in Juneau I went to look for the pub girl to tell her she could stop worrying. I had returned alive. I'm sure the girl would be so happy that she'd want to throw her arms around me. She would give me an affectionate sympathy hug. When I got to the pub her boss told me she had ended her shift half an hour ago and had gone home. I'm glad she didn't needlessly worry.


The next day was still cold, overcast and raining. By ten in the morning I had four wonderful warm drinks with hot cocoa, rum and whiskey called Chocolate Corvette, served to me by a friendly Jamaican woman who called both males and females ‘Man!' The drinks helped me stand outside in the freezing downpour as I took in the scenery.

We sailed through Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, once called Thunder Bay- this wondrous blue ice land encompasses 3.3 million acres. The waterways provide access to 16 of these glaciers, 12 of which actively calve icebergs into the bay. It is awesome-I had never been so inspired by our dynamic planet.

I was really getting back to nature and started to understand the call of the wild, the muse of wilderness. I thought about packing up and leaving the city life far behind. I would move from Manhattan to the Yukon and become the next Jack London. The Chocolate Corvettes were revving my imagination. My plans were all set in my head when an elderly woman came up to me.

“I don't know about this,� she said to me. “I don't like this one bit.�

She was talking about the ship sailing in iceberg-infested waters. I didn't think she had to worry. We were only traveling a few knots an hour.

“I mean didn't we learn anything from the movie Titanic?� she asked. “You look like a smart boy, did you learn anything from the movie Titanic?�

“Yes,� I replied. “I learned Kate Winslet has great tits.�

Our final stop in Alaska was Ketchikan. It was the first town founded in Alaska. I talked to a kid on a skateboard. He had floppy hair and was wearing a Kurt Cobain tee shirt. He thought it was cool that I'd been to Seattle. He wanted to move there someday. I asked him what life was like.

“It sucks,� he said. “There ain't no chicks.�

The birthday girl and her group paraded by. His jaw dropped.

“Fuck man, I gotta get out of here.�

In Alaska, the male/female ratio is six guys for every girl. The dating ritual is very incestuous. The guys say ‘you don't lose your girlfriend you lose your turn' and the girls say ‘the odds are good but the goods are odd'.

Ketchikan gets 15 sunny days a year, and when the sun does come out everything shuts down. Banks and schools close and the population rushes to be outside. Basically it's the opposite of a snow day. And I thought Seattle suffered a lot of gray days. I would not want to live in Ketchikan. I give up my dream of writing the next White Fang.

At dinner I had too much wine to drink (something I love to do) and started taking cheap shots at my family. Only I thought it was funny. I was trying to get back at them because the night before we were talking about my writing and what a failure I am. I told my dad I hope I make it as a writer before he dies so he can be proud of me. He smiled politely, like I had no chance.

My sister Shane wants to put a gag order on me. She said she would hire a lawyer and sue my ass for slander. I don't think she understands where I am with my writing. I told her I'm not exactly selling like David Sedaris, so the family is safe. But if she sues me and I call the press—Sister Sues Brother Writer Shock Horror—it might be good publicity, the best thing that has happened to my career. I told her to mellow out and get a grip. She should think it a privilege to be related to an artist.

My mum is trying to take stock of her kids' love lives: I'm Twenty-two, My brother William is thirty, and Shane is twenty-eight. We are neither deformed nor married. The neighbors are starting to talk. We are the cause of rumors. Something is amiss. There must be some dark sinister secret if the Gillespie kids aren't getting hitched. My mum wants to know when her children might be getting married. Even though I'm the youngest she started with me.

“What's your girlfriends name?�

“Emily.�

“Oh! I love Emily. That was your great grandmothers' name. What's her last name?�

“Capobianco.�

“What's that?�

�That's her last name.�

“Oh, she's Italian?� she asked defeated. I think my mum has been watching The Sopranos.

Shane said our mum used to warn us not to get married too young and she can tell she can't wait to become a grandmother. My sister said she might join a dating service. Her shrink thinks it's a good idea. I'm not sure how a good-looking twenty-eight-year-old successful businesswoman could get so desperate.

I was starting to feel sorry for Shane as the conversation continued. She said a lot of her girlfriends in Dallas were thinking of doing the dating service as well. The girls in Dallas are horny and single (and lonely?) Sometimes when they go out they play a game: you can't leave the club until you kiss someone. Sounds sad and stupid to me. Shane said she told her friends about her older brother-Me. She explained I'm handsome like a male model and had a great sense of humor, but alas, I was poor. The girlfriends were horrified.

�Doesn't he have a job?� They wanted to know. Shane set them straight:

“He DJs dive bars for free beer. He even runs a website that he pays for, without making any profit. He actually loses hundreds of dollars a year! And what he really wants to do is be a writer.�

The girls couldn't believe this. They thought doing something that doesn't yield a profit is as stupid as those liberal art students who went to college to actually get an education- to Shane's friends the best reason to go to college was to find a husband.

“It even gets worse,� Shane exclaimed. “He says he does it for free aesthetic expression and thought. That he wants to leave something behind that he created, to make the world a better place, at least artistically. My brother a writer! You sure can't choose your family.�

The girlfriends hung their heads and commiserated. Another cute eligible bachelor lost, not to homosexuality, but even worse, to art! It's hard to find true meaningful love in this world.


The whole trip I had been running up a bill that was put on the ship-issued card. I was going to have to pay my dad back. Of course, I hadn't paid attention to how many receipts I racked up at the bars. I threw those away to get rid of the evidence, free my pockets and drink without a guilty conscience. The tab must be in the hundreds. It had been too easy to sign away and not think about it.

I did have a plan, one that backfired radically. My idea was to win back the money I was drinking by wining at Blackjack. It took me about three hours to lose $500.

I was drunk and depressed. I was wandering around by myself trying to figure out how I lost so quickly when the birthday girl came out of nowhere and sat down next to me. I looked at her blearily. She was full of promise, never had a bad day in her life. It will be a life that will stay relatively easy. It always is with these beauties.

“It's a pretty night,� she said and smiled, her back arched, those perfect breasts stuck out. She was aware of what she had and how to use it.

“Um, hi.� The night wasn't as pretty as she was.

“I've been watching you.�

“I know.�

“What are you always typing?�

“A novel.�

“You a writer?�

“Yes.�

“Cool. I like to read sometimes.�

“It's late, shouldn't you be in bed?� I didn't have sunglasses on. I stared into those radiant brown eyes and down at her chest. She would let me touch her. It turned me on and it scared me.

“Naw, it's not that late.�

“How did that happen?� I pointed to her arm.

“I fell in cheerleading.�

“Uh-huh, well it's pretty late,� I stupidly repeated.

“Not really.�

“It's after two in the morning.�

“That's when the fun starts. I can stay up as late as I want.�

“Oh yeah?�

“Yeah. Can I kiss you?�

“What?�

“I want to kiss you.�

“We can't do that, I'm too old for you.�

“No you are not, what, are you like eighteen?�

“Only mentally.�

“What?�

“I'm twenty-two.�

“Wow,� she said not as shocked as I thought she would be. “I still want to kiss you. You go to collage?�

“No.�

“Why not?�

“I flunked out.�

“Can we make-out?�

“I can kiss you,� I said.

I placed my fingertips on the top of her head and leaned over and kissed her softly on her neck. It sounded like she actually purred. I envied her honest overwhelming emotions. She slid her hand to my stomach. I grabbed it and moved it away.

“What?� she said. “I'm not a virgin.�

“Really?� I wondered who the lucky bastard was who got to have her first. Probably some pimply faced kid who didn't realize how lucky he was.

“I'll give you a blowjob.�

“I'm sorry we can't. I'm sorry. You are a very beautiful girl, but I just can't.�

“You suck.� She got up and ran away.

I was left alone to contemplate if I should jump overboard to avoid the huge debt. I'm shallow and pathetic and broke. I'm staring as the anti-hero in the movie of my life. I hoped protecting this girl would give me some positive karma points. Than again, I wondered what the legal age of consent was. It might be different at sea.